Wednesday, February 08, 2012

On Thin Ice

People are, I see, still struggling with the icy conditions this morning and earlier, I was briefly stuck behind two cars trying to drive over the small railway bridge by the Westgate golf course. I said to my daughter, 'They won't make it' and sure enough, the Astra and the Mini both slithered back down the road on a sheet of ice. What possessed the drivers to even try it. I don't know and getting up and over was a 'Top Gear Moment' and an object lesson in 4WD.

Personally, I'm quite happy that I went on a course at TrueGrip, outside Herne Bay and I would recommend it to any driver. Simply owning a vehicle with full 4WD capability, doesn't mean one can use it effectively in icy conditions without a little instruction.

Yesterday, I struggled up to Cambridgeshire to a NATO security conference at a large RAF base. In fact it took me almost 30 minutes to leave Thanet thanks to the traffic and the arctic road conditions.

Although I wasn't able to attend any of the classified session that run over three days this week, I did manage to sit-in on a fascinating briefing on Russia's cyber policies under Putin and Medvedev; the conceptual, ideological and political gulf that divides the West and Russia where the internet is concerned. Mind you, anyone can see this and draw their own conclusions on the subject, simply by watching Russia Today on Sky TV.

While our new council diversity champion might worry that Abu Qatada is the subject of anti-Islamic discrimination, I take a rather different view. I spent an hour or more, yesterday, listening to a discussion of the capabilities of both Al-Qaeda and Al-Shebab, the latter now giving our country more cause for immediate security concern, as you may have heard on the news.

My own opinion, is that the independence of our judiciary, liberally interpreting the EU Human Rights legislation, poses a real risk to our national security interests and that can't be a good place to be, particularly with the Olympic games just around the corner! I see on the lunchtime BBC News that Home Office Minister, James Brokenshire, is off to Jordan next week to discuss the case and explore any means possible by which we can send Abu Qatada home.

In case you didn't know it, Al-Qaeda has its own glossy house magazine, Inspire, but you might find it hard to find a copy to thumb-through on the shelves of WH Smith in Margate. The production quality is pretty good too. At this point and given the subject, I'm pretty sure that GCHQ is taking a long hard look at this blog!

This morning I had a regular monthly meeting with our Council's Director of Planning, to catch-up on the progress surrounding projects such as Dreamland, Arlington and Fort Hill as well as a discussion on Thanet Earth's application to build their biggest greenhouse yet and of course Sainsbury's in Westgate.

The latter is going to be undergoing considerable scrutiny for planning, highways and of course local economic impact and I suspect it will be a topic for vigorous local discussion at next week's WWRA meeting.

6 comments:

So what was the outcome of your catch-up on Arlington, Dreamland and Fort Hill?As for finding ANY magazine in Margate WH Smith ... they seem to have a fetish about moving stock around the store every few hours while one door remains firmly locked and the till queues grow ever longer. It sometimes appears that it would be quicket to go tow WEstwood after all!